Even China can't halt PC sales decline

The powerhouse of the global PC market, the Asia Pacific region, has finally succumbed to economic volatility in other regions with Q2 shipments set to decline, according to analysts.

IDC’s latest forecast for the period put shipments in the region (excluding Japan) at 30.7 million units, down one per cent from the same time last year.

The news will be rather unwelcome, especially considering the global market has only recently showed signs of gradual recovery, growing 2.3 per cent last quarter.

HP and Dell were the biggest losers, registering a drop in unit shipments of 19 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.

Acer continues to struggle after an annus horribilis in 2011, with shipments dropping by 8 per cent year-on-year in Q2, while Asus (26 per cent) and Lenovo (14 per cent) both managed to grow theirs.

The gloomy predictions come thanks to continued economic instability in the West, which has forced enterprises and consumers to rein in spending, while competition from smartphones and tablets has also “taken some sheen off the PC market”, according to IDC analyst Avinash Kalyana Sundaram.

He told The Reg that China, India and Indonesia in particular are leading the charge and singled out public sector projects in India as “contributing significantly to the region’s growth recently”.

Despite seeing growth drop off this quarter, however, IDC is putting this down as a temporary blip and reckons consumer demand will help pull the region back around by year’s end.

“It is fair to say that this has taken some sheen off the PC market, but not to the degree that consumers have stopped buying PCs,” Sundaram told The Register.

“If anything, PC growth is expected to continue in the region, as vendors continue to target the under-penetrated markets where consumers still consider a PC as their primary computing device.” ®